A poem for The Dead

Sorrows

He weighed six stone -

The size of my daughter, aged ten -

The skin baggy on the bone,

The meat of him gone.

Death reduces, like a good sauce.

A scrawny thing, a corpse -

Carries no weight, no remorse,

No apology, no applause.

And memory, eaten at by worms,

Claws at skeletons, at the marrow;

And grief struggles to find a form,

Scraping and picking and gnawing

At sorrows.

Welcoming the Slaughter, a poem on love and breakdown

Ben and Jane (an extract)

Jane has boxes for everything.

She keeps them under the bed,

In the bedroom of the house

In her head.

Her mother gave her the boxes;

Label them carefully, she said.

What kind of boxes? Egg boxes?

Tea chests?  Crates? 

She was anxious to get it right.

If you like. 

What kind of guidance was that?

Her first box was Anxiety:

A shoe box, big enough for boots;

They’d been in a sale;

They chafed her heels.

The lid didn’t fit.

 

She’d found the house in a memory,

Though she couldn’t remember it.

The front door,

Fanlighted, letter-boxed,

Its number an opaque code,

Leads to the stairs,

And off the landing is the bedroom,

Cluttered with boxes.

There is a window,

Its sill cluttered with boxes.

Light streams against the pane,

But the view is a blank,

As if the house were in a carwash.

 

The other rooms feel forbidding. 

She thinks there are lodgers,

Whom she may have met,

Or would have liked to.

Sometimes,

She hears their voices,

Soft, sociable noises,

The clink of glasses,

Murmured laughter;

 

Sometimes,

A nervous greeting:

The bleating of a small animal,

Welcoming the slaughter.

 

Other times,

When alone,

She sits on the bed

And imagines herself crying,

Wanting a mother for the daughter.

Holding on? Or letting go? A poem

Sedimentation

The years accumulate,

Are stacked and packed

Onto shelves that bend

With the weight that

Selves can barely bear;

Each volume printed,

Indexed, the pages uncut,

Stored against time,

In the library of us,

Undusted,

As if we could be read,

Could read, would read,

The diary we would keep,

Were there time,

Time to retreat, to start again.

And Time’s bending in the river’s flow:

The silted corners,

The stagnant oxbow lake,

The tributaries turned to backwater

Rush by now, glimpsed;

And all that fear and hope

Kicking against the current

That’s pulling us out to sea.

And what to say?

Tongue swollen with a brackish discontent

And life’s failures a wishbone in the throat.

The floods and droughts:

The ink running from the page,

Fading in the sun.

The time, the time …

The mind flails,

Swimming in the deep water of itself,

Or beached upon its own desolate shore.

Each day now begins blank, unwritten,

And closes so.

Each night the detritus settles, thickens,

And flowing slows.

And death opens its black, toothless mouth -

A lipless, estuary-wide smile -

And yawns.

Dark Atlas, poem

Dark Atlas

A map’s been nailed to the four corners of a round table.

There’s a key; there’s a scale; there are symbols:

Figures in a landscape, a path to follow;

Birds taking flight: an eagle, a swallow.

There is a route marked in red -

A river like an artery that has bled

Over mountain and forest to the ocean

Of our unknowing: a feeling, a prehension.

And somewhere in the dark atlas of the mind

Is the conceit in the relief of a journey that is signed.

The Reader of Oneself, a poem on hope and loss

Ex libris

Browsing on the bargain shelf …

A school book anthology whose leaves

Thickened the dust on the shelves

Of adolescent minds in Tottenville High,

Staten Island 7, N.Y.

I see cheerleaders – rah-rah skirts,

Thighs as pink, as firm, as prosthetics.

I see jocks, jaws as square as photo-fits,

Lettermen strutting in their varsity jackets,

Their skin a size too small for their musculature,

Their minds gripped by the image of pudenda clutched

In taut white panty-gussets; Feminine rime

Grinding against the masculine scheme.

Such urgent, relentless desires:

Dreams scored in flesh and fire.

Turned cold now.  Lost your bottle;

Hope’s sunk like a ship scuttled.

Doctors now, teachers, fathers and mothers;

Or drug addicts, alcoholics, death-row murderers.

And the poetry’s mostly gone from our lives,

The lust too, though, maybe, some love survives,

And for those who moved on, who were dauntless,

Perhaps, they’ve acquired some rhythmic, prosaic happiness.

… I reveal something cheap about myself. 

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A four-letter word

Home

When they go out and slam the door,

The house remains faithful

To their absence.

Surfaces insidiously gather dust,

A secret accretion blocking pores,

A skin hardening to indifference.

The curtains, impartial, as usual,

Will not be drawn, so the windows

Are left to frown upon light and shadow.

A tap, its mouth loose, drips, spittle

Calcifying and spreading the tittle-tattle of rust.

The clock unwinds, ticks, tocks

A touch more slowly or quickly,

Adjusts as its mood thins or thickens.

The fridge hums and then forgets

The tune, falling into a frigid sulk

With a juddering shudder.

The milk feels left out and sour,

Its jagged lips pouting.

Toast crumbs, ignored, foretell

Fortunes that still no one is reading.

The iron flirts with the idea of being left on,

Of wrinkles smoothed, of creases gone.

The TV, blind-eyed, remains on standby,

Soap operas stored, ready for replay.

The mirrors doze in unlidded sleep,

Dreaming the empty rooms,

With unbelieving eyes.

The alarm clock, awakened from a snooze,

Petulant and querulous, repeatedly peeps.

The photographs, held on pause,

And having cause to believe in their own story,

Stare, without memory, into the cold light of day.

The washing machine, on a dark wash program,

Matinees intimacy - Boxer’s Tangle with Tights!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Pyjamas, discarded and spastic,

Savour the heat and aroma

Of armpit and crotch.

Fragrances linger, a snatch of voices,

Scenting the foul air, where smells and noises

Commingle – a his and hers, a redolence

Of the bitter perfume of spilt coffee

And shattered crockery.

And where the echo of sharp words

Clashed like cutlery in a kitchen drawer,

Slashed at history like swords drawn,

The walls ache with silence.

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Still Life

Ballast

First of all, the furniture is rearranged,

Shifted here and there: a blunt knife

To cut light and shadow;

As if the complex architecture of their life

Could so simply be changed:

A sofa, a chair, a table by the window.

Still, it remains more Hopper than IKEA.

Next, they redecorate; take paint and brush,

Overlay the cold, stark, strident white

Of wall, cornice and ceiling

With pastels, warm, soft, hushed,

To quieten the hue and cry -

A camouflage, a toning down of feelings.

As if colour could cover and dilute the fear.

They move house - a last resort - their baggage

Packed, but it’s a ballast too heavy

To save them from the wreckage of truth,

A listing and sinking beyond salvage,

The deceit a wave spilling over the levee.

And love is a compass pointed north and south,

So the geography is a map that shreds and tears ...

A topographical tale that ends in tears.

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A Free Lunch? A poem on faith

The Free Lunch (service included)

The waitress brings him soup;

The Chef’s special, written up

Sans serif, no curlicues, no loops.

He bends over his bowl,

Scoops up a morsel of gruel,

And something dark and animal;

Dipping his spoon, dipping

His head, blowing and sipping,

Tasting and chewing spoonfuls

Of gristly meat that stick in his teeth.

Chewing; it could be the beef,

Rather hopeful of a lamb,

Young and tender,

Melting in the mouth,

In the palm of his hand.

Slurping a greasy treat,

Burping, he bends his head,

As if saying grace, stares

Into the space that offers

Instead … 

She places a plate of bread

Upon the table, sliced knife thin;

A coin upon his tongue -

The pain a song, a hymn -

A paper cut, he winces;

And she brings a glass of wine,

The light upon it slick, sanguine.

He licks his lips, and sips, sups,

Convinced;

Feels it in his gullet.

Pats his pocket for his wallet.

He coughs, he’ll cough up.

He will pay the bill and leave –                                                                                    

Erasing the stains upon his sleeve – a tip.

He could have chosen another menu,

Lived and dined at another venue,

Slipped into that other life … repeat.

The waitress hovers, canted over,

As he wavers over something sweet;

Listening, disposes, just, like a mother,

Like a wife, immaculate; she advises.

She takes his order for dessert,

Nodding her responses,

Ticking off chapter and verse.

He’ll get what he deserves –

Just - the ugly sister’s foot,

And it will fit, at a push, with a nod

And a wink; and what’s left on his plate

She’ll scrape into the sink.

She’ll clear the table and wipe the slate.

Placate.

He’ll have the cake … and eat it.

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Self-portrait, a poem

Self-portrait

An image jars, and looking up from your book,

You catch yourself, unawares, staring back,

Lurking behind the kitchen window,

Not quite a stranger, not quite someone you know:

Someone outside, someone held in the dark;

Someone deformed by shadow, yet stark;

Disfigured, but mumbled rather than spoken;

Brushstrokes dissolving: a portrait by Bacon.

Half the face is missing (an unsigned caricature), 

The head tilted back, the mouth cleaved,

Turned down, toothless – a chevron of torture,

But the features whisper where they should scream.

Something atavistic in the cant of the skull - simian;

The black eyeholes watching, assessing you as prey;

Who’s outside and who’s in: Neanderthal? Homo sapiens?

Found out, you’ve been hunted down by your own Dorian Gray. 


Click here to see some of Bacon's pictures

The self and the other, a poem

In the last poem, Imago, there was the idea of a second self, a pure self - an alter ego, a possibility awaiting realisation: the voice in our head that speaks to us of us.
It is a fiction, of course - the story of us that we tell ourselves - an apocrypha, a shadow on the wall of our cave.

Second Coming

He was a long time coming,

A hard time we had of it:

Climbing the mountain took his childhood,

The summit never in view, always over

The next rise; the deferral of arrival.

Swimming the ocean found him struggling

To keep his head clear of the waves

That rolled over him, yet pushed

Him forward while the undertow

Pulled at his tired, aching limbs,

Leaving him washed up on the shore

Of middle-age.

The desert crossing was death:

The scenery unchanging and endless;

The heat dried him out,

The thirst was memory –

Unquenchable and imprecise.

And at night the chill broke his bones;

The swallowed sun shattered to a myriad stars,

Each one a candle his breath couldn’t reach,

A thousand birthday wishes he could no longer make.

Yet finally they went out, not of a sudden,

But one by one by one by one …

The darkness reaching back,

Stretching ahead.

He had always been a long way off,

Too far back to catch up,

And I’d lose sight of him,

For years … out of mind.

Then I’d see him, distant and dim,

Dwarfed by the mountain,

Or bobbing like a cork;

Swimming in the heat haze,

Or shimmering with the cold.

Then, finally, not quite erased,

He’d disappear again,

And I’d wonder if he’d’ve recognised me,

Or I him; We’d travelled so far.

The day he passed me by,

I was certain it was him,

But I couldn’t call out.

How sure his step was;

How I envied his glide, his grace.

How could I have doubted him?

Why should he not leave me behind?

Stepping over the divided line.

The world, after all, was his:

The mountains, the seas, the deserts.

There is darkness in the jungle.

God will not tread here:

The trees do not believe,

And the fruit ripens in the mouth.

I lift my snout from the muddied puddle,

Sniff the air, and scenting danger,

Scuttle back to my burrow.

 

There was so much to say,

And yet when I found him

Shivering in my dimly-lit cave,

Flickering like a candle flame,

Our shadows made monstrous

On the damp walls,

Our breath mixed and condensing,

The light simply went out.

We were extinguished, Plato.

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